+++
title = "World changing events"
date = "2020-04-11"
description = "Ramblings about how COVID-19 has changed things."
+++


Just some rambling...

I wish more folks would \"follow the rules\" to stay safe. But for now I
have been okay. Some of this feels like the internet just got popular
again, 90s style. Other parts feel like I have to stay home sick, but
without actually feeling ill.

The virus(es)
=============

I think that if it is racist to call COVID-19 the \"Chinese virus\" and
I do think so, then MERS should probably not be called that either, even
under the best intentions. Would something similar to COVID-12 not have
worked?

Internet software
=================

Over the last several years I have used quite a few software and
hardware options for making video conference calls. Some lack a free
license, thus proprietary. Most of them I have used for work. Some of
them I just used for playing video games and others, more recently, I
have used for calling family. Some of them have chat features.

-   Discord
-   GoToMeeting
-   Google Hangouts (multiple)
-   Jami (formerly Ring, SFLphone)
-   Jitsi
-   Pidgin
-   Polycom (multiple)
-   Riot/Matrix
-   Roll20
-   SIP (various impmlementations)
-   Signal
-   Skype
-   Slack
-   TeamViewer
-   WebEx
-   WebRTC (mostly Firefox)
-   XMPP/Jabber (various implementations)
-   Zoom

In addition to these, I also want to mention mumble. For a while I used
it on a regular basis for voice-only calls.

Personally, I could do without many of these. Having just one good
option chat that could work on more than one device (eg, desktop and
mobile), remember history for async communication, remove history (eg
after x number of days), and have end-to-end encryption. Then the chats
could exec to whatever video chat, such as Jitsi Meet.
